Republicans are always whining about the real unemployment numbers. What's it up to now 30% or so in their world? Maybe when Romney wins we can can start calculating unemployment by their math. Heck we could claim unemployment shot up 400% in Romney's first year!

You seem to be repeating a mistake often made by observers, which is that you think that all the reports generated by the BLS are linked. You're referencing one report based on unemployment claims applications; the unemployment rate is based instead on a random survey of households (details on methodology here), and the "jobs created" number -- reported on the same date as the unemployment rate -- is based on a third survey of businesses.

Granny_Panties:Republicans are always whining about the real unemployment numbers. What's it up to now 30% or so in their world? Maybe when Romney wins we can can start calculating unemployment by their math. Heck we could claim unemployment shot up 400% in Romney's first year!

Republican math means you would compare Obama's U6 figure to Romney's U3, so unemployment will drop immediately he takes office.

I only rememeber them being revised up every time.... for gods knows how long, well into Bush's term at the least. Never revised down. I am just to lazy to check into this to check if really true or if it is a memory bias where I only remember bad news.

You represent the worst of the worst. The willful, and incredibly gleeful, ignorance of FACTS. I would pity you, you but for the damage you and your ilk do.

From the article:

On Oct. 11, the federal government reported that weekly jobless claims were down significantly, suggesting a dramatic national increase in economic growth and a steep decline in layoffs. Jobless claims, according to the Labor Department, had fallen by 30,000 to 339,000, their lowest level since February 2008.

The good news for the Obama administration spread quickly, with outlets like CNN and Bloomberg declaring, "Jobless claims fall to four-year low."

But within hours, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Labor Department analysts announced that one major state had failed to fully document jobless claims. They declined to name the state.

Speculation among market watchers and economists initially focused on California, but the state's Employment Development Department strongly denied that it had failed to properly document the data.

"Reports that California failed to fully report data to the U.S. Department of Labor, as required, are incorrect and irresponsible," California Employment Development Department director Pam Harris said in a statement last week. "The California Employment Development Department, which administers the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program in the state, has reported all UI claims data and submitted the data on time."

Early Thursday, the federal government finally revealed that California had, in fact, under-reported jobless data, skewing the national jobless claims results. This week's updated jobs report corrected the error and showed unemployment claims spiking back up by 46,000 to 388,000.

You seem to be repeating a mistake often made by observers, which is that you think that all the reports generated by the BLS are linked. You're referencing one report based on unemployment claims applications; the unemployment rate is based instead on a random survey of households (details on methodology here), and the "jobs created" number -- reported on the same date as the unemployment rate -- is based on a third survey of businesses.

You can't expect them to know that weekly unemployment filings in October have no relation to the rate for November.

As far as the unemployment rate: not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but Gallup just released their estimate (which tracks closely) for the first half of this month and they're showing it at 7.3% now. Considering that that number isn't seasonally adjusted and they've had to adjust it 0.4% and 0.5% the last two years we're looking at probably just about the same rate as last month or close to it as last month (and this number is a private survey and not related to this California thing at all). However, that could definitely change.

...And here is where we both call each other hypocrites as Republicans say Democrats can't accept these numbers as legitimate unless they also agree that Romney is up 7 in the polls and Democrats say Republicans have to accept that Gallup supports the unemployment numbers being legitimate if they want to say the one major polling organization showing Romney gaining ground in the last couple days rather than show his bump from the first debate fading into a nearly tied race is the only pollster who is calling the race right.

Revisions of tens of thousands happen every single month, and they never change the big picture. 45K of 390K new filings weren't reported on time due to a state official . The BLS, who noticed the error quickly and had it corrected, has been accused for weeks of cooking the books and faking the unemployment numbers. Are Jack Welch and everyone else who followed his cue now planning on apologizing to the BLS officials whom they accused of corruption?

happydude45:You represent the worst of the worst. The willful, and incredibly gleeful, ignorance of FACTS. I would pity you, you but for the damage you and your ilk do.

FTFWiki:On January 11, 2010, Tucker Carlson and former Vice President Dick Cheney aide Neil Patel launched a political news website titled The Daily Caller. The editorial staff is led by executive editor Megan Mulligan and features reporting from White House correspondent Jon Ward, formerly of The Washington Times and reporter Alex Pappas.

1. If Tucker Carlson, Dick Cheney or anybody connected to Sun Myung Moon told me that fire was hot, I'd have to pull out my Zippo lighter and double-check. Far-right extremist whackos, the lot of them.

2. I cannot find any third-party verification from a source that isn't known for its right-wing tendencies. If my Google-fu fails me and you do have one or two, please link to them so that I might reconsider. I apologise for not being gullible enough for your standards, but I think that Elvis is standing behind you.

Selection bias us indeed a form of ignorance. Rejecting information merely because they may not agree with your political bias us the height of ignorance. The article merely pointed out facts. Ft rejected these facts in no other basis than it didn't agree with his bias. This leads to ignorance. Liberals on fark want nothing more than to make fark another leftist echo chamber so they don't have to deal with countering views or facts. Professor Haidt has described this in his latest book if you are curious.

Fluorescent Testicle:happydude45: You represent the worst of the worst. The willful, and incredibly gleeful, ignorance of FACTS. I would pity you, you but for the damage you and your ilk do.

FTFWiki: On January 11, 2010, Tucker Carlson and former Vice President Dick Cheney aide Neil Patel launched a political news website titled The Daily Caller. The editorial staff is led by executive editor Megan Mulligan and features reporting from White House correspondent Jon Ward, formerly of The Washington Times and reporter Alex Pappas.

1. If Tucker Carlson, Dick Cheney or anybody connected to Sun Myung Moon told me that fire was hot, I'd have to pull out my Zippo lighter and double-check. Far-right extremist whackos, the lot of them.

2. I cannot find any third-party verification from a source that isn't known for its right-wing tendencies. If my Google-fu fails me and you do have one or two, please link to them so that I might reconsider. I apologise for not being gullible enough for your standards, but I think that Elvis is standing behind you.

The unemployment rate for September isn't affected by October, not the unemployment rate for November. FTFM.

And the biggest thing about the numbers was a real jump this week, not some hidden details last week. Last week was initially reported as 339,000 new claims but was actually 342,000 new claims. That's a difference of less than 1% and still would have been great news considering 350,000 is considered to be a good sign of growth. This week was 388,000 (up 13.5% from the previous week) which would be a definite cause for concern if viewed in a vacuum. If you do a rolling 4 week average though it's at 365,500; up about 750 jobs per week from last weeks very sunny numbers, but still in a fairly growth oriented range considering. This time last year it was at 399,750 a week rolling average, and if you check the unemployment rate this time last year was when the numbers finally started dropping out of a holding pattern of 9-9.1% and got into the low 8% by the start of this year.

These aren't great numbers, but they are consistent with a sustained slow recovery that experts agree is going on. Everyone who studies these numbers can tell you trying to find one datapoint on a weekly basis as either evidence that the recovery is speeding up or that the economy is headed for a double dip is absolutely useless.

Besides, did the weekly new unemployment filings get much ink for being so low? Hell, even the monthly rate got less ink for being at 7.8% than it got for Republicans claiming a conspiracy about it.

MyRandomName:imontheinternet: Nevermind. The Labor Department confirmed that the numbers haven't changed, and that California had reported.

California was understaffed, so some applications were still being processed by print time and were not counted, but it had no effect on the bigger picture.

Lol. Your first paragraph says numbers dudnt change, then second says numbers were still being processed so they were.

Which is it dear? Hint. California under reported as they hadn't finished counting re-applications, so numbers were actually 40k more than originally reported, hence revised numbers.

"The decline in claims this week was driven by smaller than expected increases in most states and because of drops in claims in a number of states where we were expecting an increase. No single state was responsible for the majority of the decline in initial unemployment insurance claims."

The California numbers may have been slightly off and can be revised later, but the overall good news was not because of California.

Republicans will just have to accept the tragedy that the unemployment rate is slowly getting better.

The Green Manalishi:CONSPIRACY!!!!1!111!!Seriously, if unemployment numbers were so easy to manipulate, wouldn't they be, like, 2.1% by now?

Why yes, because everybody knows that lieberals all "work" for the government.

on another note, I've actually been for REAL information about certain political subjects over the last few days. It is damn hard to find any unbiased reporting--99% of what comes up in a search is farking blogs and bullshiat sites that look like all they do is have a search engine searching for inflammatory topics, then post whatever comes up. The same delusional shiat is posted on 100 websites, because it was cited on The Onion or some Faux News talking head, or something even worse, and it just goes on forever....and far down the page, you have someone saying, "This is not true! This is a story from _____, it has no basis in reality!!"

Fark, it's no wonder everybody in our country is functionally retarded. What is the saying? "A lie can go around the world before truth finishes putting on its pants" ?

Selection bias us indeed a form of ignorance. Rejecting information merely because they may not agree with your political bias us the height of ignorance. The article merely pointed out facts. Ft rejected these facts in no other basis than it didn't agree with his bias. This leads to ignorance. Liberals on fark want nothing more than to make fark another leftist echo chamber so they don't have to deal with countering views or facts. Professor Haidt has described this in his latest book if you are curious.

You are incorrect. Selection bias occurs when an individual ignores one of two (or more) equally reputable sources of information because the information itself is unfavorable. The Daily Caller is not reputable.

If I kept telling you that you had cancer, and each time your tests came back negative, you would stop getting yourself tested. It's possible I could be right one of those times, but that doesn't make me a reputable source of information.

imontheinternet:Nevermind. The Labor Department confirmed that the numbers haven't changed, and that California had reported. California was understaffed, so some applications were still being processed by print time and were not counted, but it had no effect on the bigger picture.

happydude45:On Oct. 11, the federal government reported that weekly jobless claims were down significantly, suggesting a dramatic national increase in economic growth and a steep decline in layoffs. Jobless claims, according to the Labor Department, had fallen by 30,000 to 339,000, their lowest level since February 2008....Early Thursday, the federal government finally revealed that California had, in fact, under-reported jobless data, skewing the national jobless claims results. This week's updated jobs report corrected the error and showed unemployment claims spiking back up by 46,000 to 388,000.

And the revised figures for last week are not 342,000 instead of 339,000 - such a massive change.

MyRandomName:imontheinternet: Nevermind. The Labor Department confirmed that the numbers haven't changed, and that California had reported.

California was understaffed, so some applications were still being processed by print time and were not counted, but it had no effect on the bigger picture.

Lol. Your first paragraph says numbers dudnt change, then second says numbers were still being processed so they were.

Which is it dear? Hint. California under reported as they hadn't finished counting re-applications, so numbers were actually 40k more than originally reported, hence revised numbers.

No, the numbers for the week before last were revised upwards 3K. The numbers for last week were 46K more than the previous week. Just because new numbers came out does not mean the new numbers all apply to the previous week.

There was a dramatic uptick in new unemployment claims last week after a couple weeks of drops in the weeks before. Here, since the beginning of last month:

That explains how the numbers have been trending downward even with this one week spike. Check the DOL's report r539cy if you think I'm wrong.

Also, remember how the 339K number was the lowest weekly claims report since the same number was claimed 2/9/08? The second lowest one since had been 345K on 3/1/08. So congratulations: the administration obviously lied so the media would report new unemploynment claims being their lowest since February 2008 to hide the fact that new unemployment claims were only at their lowest level since February 2008.

Fluorescent Testicle:imontheinternet: Nevermind. The Labor Department confirmed that the numbers haven't changed, and that California had reported. California was understaffed, so some applications were still being processed by print time and were not counted, but it had no effect on the bigger picture.

Heh. Looks like I'm not the "Willfully ignorant" one after all. :)

If facts are corrected, I won't ignore them just because of where they are reported. Just open your mind a bit and allow yourself to think.

happydude45:Fluorescent Testicle: imontheinternet: Nevermind. The Labor Department confirmed that the numbers haven't changed, and that California had reported. California was understaffed, so some applications were still being processed by print time and were not counted, but it had no effect on the bigger picture.

Heh. Looks like I'm not the "Willfully ignorant" one after all. :)

If facts are corrected, I won't ignore them just because of where they are reported. Just open your mind a bit and allow yourself to think.

The Daily Caller is either ignornant or is trying to mislead. The correction didn't come entirely from California according to the Department of Labor and constituted just under a 0.9% increase in the number. The article claims the Department of Labor released a correction adding an additional 46,000 unemployment claims that they attributed to California not turning in numbers. The 46,000 number is the difference between the 10/6 revised numbers and the completely new numbers for 10/13.

Grungehamster:The Daily Caller is either ignornant or is trying to mislead. The correction didn't come entirely from California according to the Department of Labor and constituted just under a 0.9% increase in the number. The article claims the Department of Labor released a correction adding an additional 46,000 unemployment claims that they attributed to California not turning in numbers. The 46,000 number is the difference between the 10/6 revised numbers and the completely new numbers for 10/13.

And they keep calling them "unemployment" numbers instead of "initial jobless claims" numbers.

Two entirely separate data-sets, collected in entirely different manners.